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Coventry University has trialled a new education workshop designed to inspire IT innovation amongst students. With concern growing

“Engaging with Sandde has enabled people to

re-evaluate how they draw, what the act of drawing means, as well as thinking about the possibilities of where this can go in the future. At Bath Spa University, we’re looking forward to developing artistic practice and research collaborations in this area, building on the art school’s history and strength in art and design research.”

UNIT4

efficiencies, reduce costs, facilitate beter services to the campus community and adapt to sector change more easily. “We are highly

ambitious in our pursuit of research growth and excellence,” said Iwan Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor at Swansea University. He added: “As such we will

need to scale our operations and adapt our strategy along the way. With the flexibility of UNIT4 Campus, and by holding information in one place, we will have a more portable operating model which can come with us on this journey of superb research and education.”

over the lack of IT skills being taught in British schools and a decline in students signing up to higher education IT and computing courses, there is a national push to reintroduce the teaching of coding skills across the curriculum and reinvigorate a generation’s interest in information technology. In recognition of this,

IT provider XMA decided to partner up with Oasis Community Learning and Oasis Academy Hadley to enable students to conceive, design, develop, test and evaluate their own ‘serious computer game’ with the support of the Serious Games Institute (SGI) experts in games-based learning. By selecting Black History

Month as the theme, the students were able to combine learning about coding, the software development industry, what customers want and how to work effectively in teams. Bringing in the expertise of

the SGI, the team put together two day-long workshops which encouraged students

to understand coding through a series of tasks which required them to develop their knowledge of the programing languages Scratch and Python. Guy Bates, director at

XMA, said: “Utilising a games scenario to teach coding is a major step-change in the way we approach information technology learning in our schools. We saw a real mix of abilities and expertise and it was interesting to see how each student used transferable skills to develop their games. Maths, Science and English all play a vital role in software development and game coding, alongside IT capabilities. Students recognised this and were able to apply their knowledge from other areas of education to aid their performance in the tasks. Creative skills were also tested when considering the end- user and a game’s potential commercial value and success.” In recent years, the barrier

to entry for anyone who wants to code has lowered significantly. Apple and others now offer free developer tools and a global store front to market and sell applications. This allows students to create and share applications on the same stage as commercial developers.